Love on the Run

One of my favorite moments of the day is when I pick up the girls from school. I get Cate first because she has to wait in line with her class before her kindergarten teacher releases her to me. I usually see Cate before she sees me, her shocking blonde hair obvious in the line-up of the other five year olds. She’s always standing on her tip toes, hands on the railing, eyes intently scanning for my face in the crowd. When she sees me, her face softens, her blue eyes light up, and without fail she hollers, “I see my mom!”

Without regard for anything or anyone else around her (and usually without even being dismissed), she erupts into movement, a smile stretching across her face as she runs. I watch her. She is a ball of blurry energy. A little girl in a deliberate, all-consuming frenzy. She’s in pursuit…of me. She weaves in and out of the bodies, (most of them larger than her), that mill around in the space between us. Feet moving lightly and arms pumping furiously despite the backpack she’s lugging behind her, she finds her way to me. She might as well be flying.

And then…

She’s in my arms, swinging up in the air as I lift her easily off her feet. I can smell syrup and last night’s shampoo in her hair and I feel her warm cheeks, flushed red from her run against my skin. Nothing that happened before that moment of the day even matters. How could it possibly?

Love has a way of doing that.

Because no matter what rages around it, love simply can’t be contained… Sometimes it’s not waiting patiently it’s sprinting across the distance. And not once but over and over again. Love doesn’t get tired, it’s not an inconvenience, it doesn’t weaken or distract. Love doesn’t have impossible timing. Love needs no other reason to celebrate, it is the reason to celebrate. So sometimes love doesn’t stand idly by or sit patiently in the corner waiting to be noticed…not when it could be running full tilt across a schoolyard.